MakerBot Desktop | The Best Place to Keep Your 3D Models

We’ve already learned how MakerBot Desktop is easy to connect to and create 3D prints with, but it’s also the ideal space to collect, organize, and share your digital models. In this post, we’ll explore the amazing capabilities of the MakerBot Cloud Library, a secure, cloud-enabled system for managing your personal designs and collections of 3D printable files.

Smart Storage
Log into MakerBot Desktop with your MakerBot account and check out the Library tab. You’ll see four sections: All Things, Purchased Things, Thingiverse, and My Designs (Private). Let’s take a closer look at what we can use them for.

Purchased ThingsEvery time you purchase content from the MakerBot Digital Store, your files will appear here. We’ve also given you two free Digital Store samples to get you started. They are in the Free Samples folder.

Thingiverse
When you are viewing a Thing page, click Collect to save the Thing file(s) to your Library. You’ll have the choice of saving it to the Things to Make folder, or creating a new folder. Any design you publish to Thingiverse will be filed in the My Designs folder.

Note: A Thing is what you see in the list views in the Library, and can consist of multiple files that you can print or prepare.

My Designs (Private)
This is where you can store files you’ve uploaded from your own computer that did not originate from either Thingiverse or the MakerBot Digital Store. Click +New to either add a new Thing or new folder. When you add a new Thing, a dialog box will open allowing you to navigate to your file in order to upload it. Feel free to name it and add a description. You can also add files to your My Designs (Private) folder by adding a model from your computer to the Prepare Screen and then saving it.

Note: These are designs you’ve chosen to not yet share on Thingiverse. If you decide to share any of them later, MakerBot Desktop makes public copies of them but keeps the private copies in the My Designs (Private) folder.

If you’re not sure where a particular Thing is filed, you can always use the keyword search function to find it.

Once you’ve found the file you’re looking for, click on it for more detailed information, including (if it’s from Thingiverse) the designer’s username, the date it was published, and any other information the designer posted to the Thing page. Once you’ve sliced and saved the file, it will save to the My Layouts folder in this detailed view.

Part of Your Workflow
The MakerBot Cloud Library can also be central to your design and discovery process, and can be woven into your workflow in different ways.

– If you’re just browsing Thingiverse for inspiration, or don’t want to start printing quite yet, collect Things now and they’ll be ready to print for later—all in one place in your Library.

– If you made some changes to a file and saved that layout, go back to that file within the Library and find your personalized layout ready for you to print again.

That wraps it up for the MakerBot Desktop education series. We hope it’s the beginning of your exploration of this best-in-class software that runs MakerBot products, which are setting the standard in 3D printing and 3D scanning.
Thanks for joining us. We can’t wait to see what you make!

2 Comments so far

you are always targeting Makerbot Desktop towards 5th generation Replicator. Does that mean that I (using a Replicator 2 > 4th generation) should not use it?

See you
*Fuchur*

Tiffany Diorio

April 18, 2014 at 12:10 pm

Hi Furchur,
Great question. Right now it is recommended to be used with the MakerBot Replicator Fifth Generation, but we do have plans to continue updating Desktop to ensure that it will soon be available for use on all of MakerBot’s 3D printers.

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